Speaking with Reuters at this year’s Sun Valley retreat in Idaho, Schmidt revealed that both Google and Apple have been participating in several meetings over the past year, suggesting that the two companies are trying to work together to resolve their differences. According to Schmidt, Apple and Google are in “constant business discussions on a long list of issues.” Although details regarding the issues are left to speculation, Schmidt did reveal that Google’s chief business officer Nikesh Arora led many of the meetings.

Being reasonably close partners at one point in time, both Apple and Google have drifted apart after the search giant introduced its Android operating system, which has subsequently taken over the global smartphone market. In an interview in October of 2012, Schmidt himself said that the battle between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android is the “defining fight of the industry today,” and not much has changed since then.

For its part, Apple has tried to move away from its reliance on Google or data in almost every aspect of iOS. For example, the first five iterations of Apple’s mobile OS featured a suite of apps built on Google’s assets, including Maps and YouTube. Starting with iOS 6, the Google Maps-driven Maps app was replaced by Apple’s own solution and the native YouTube app was also removed. Google ultimately ended up creating standalone iterations of the native apps in order to maintain its presence on the iOS platform.

As mentioned before, what Schmidt was referring to remains unknown and just left to speculation. We’ll have to wait and see if the talks lead to anything that will turn out to be helpful to the average consumer.

I hope it's not something like going back to Google maps because those are terrible. However I wouldn't mind apple showing them how to make the YouTube app actually work.

Google maps is terrible? You couldnt possibly be serious. Google maps is many times superior to apples maps even IF apple maps didnt have issues with melting terrain and structures and giving wrong directions.

I've had problems with both google maps, and apple maps giving wrong directions. Almost always, at least 1 of them is correct. I like the search better in Google Maps (it seems to find more relevant results), but I like the fact that apple maps uses vector graphics.

Google maps would be an upgrade from Apple's maps offering if you ask me.. and I know you didn't ask me

Didn't ask you. Apple maps for iPhone is way better and has better integration into iOS than google maps has. I've never had a problem with locations being wrong and actually in my experience, apple maps has been more accurate than google maps.

Didn't ask you. Apple maps for iPhone is way better and has better integration into iOS than google maps has. I've never had a problem with locations being wrong and actually in my experience, apple maps has been more accurate than google maps.

Same here. Never had a problem or wrong directions. Had downloaded Google Maps when it came out and deleted within 30 minutes. Just didn't like it.

Google maps is terrible? You couldnt possibly be serious. Google maps is many times superior to apples maps even IF apple maps didnt have issues with melting terrain and structures and giving wrong directions.

Didn't ask you. Apple maps for iPhone is way better and has better integration into iOS than google maps has. I've never had a problem with locations being wrong and actually in my experience, apple maps has been more accurate than google maps.

Well, of course it has better iOS integration as Apple totally removed Google maps integration from iOS. You can't really blame Google for that. I like Apple maps just fine, but I haven't personally had a single instance where Apple maps was "more accurate" than Google maps.

Didn't ask you. Apple maps for iPhone is way better and has better integration into iOS than google maps has. I've never had a problem with locations being wrong and actually in my experience, apple maps has been more accurate than google maps.